Dreams

Dreams are so rich and full of life that scientists had believed that they must have some psychological purpose. Psychologists like Freud believed that dreaming provided a playground for the unconscious mind. Another psychologist, Jung had said dreaming was a stage where a person’s archetypes acted out primal themes. But are they correct?

Newer theories say that dreams help the brain to consolidate emotional memories or to work though stressful problems happening in one’s life. Some argue that the main function of rapid-eye-movement sleep, or REM (when most dreaming occurs) is in fact physiological. “The brain is warming its circuits, anticipating the sights and sounds and emotions of waking,” says one scientist, “dreams are [just a healthy biological way of] tuning the mind for conscious awareness.” These people believe that when a person is awake, the brain just revises its dream images to match what it sees, hears and feels; the dreams are “corrected” by the senses, for there are no senses in dreams. For example, if someone was floating on a cloud in a dream, the dreamer would not think much of it, but if this were reality, the person’s senses would tell him/her, that couldn’t be right. Recent surveys even show that people tended to attach more significance to a negative dream if  “it was about someone they disliked, and more to a positive dream if it was about a friend.” Also, only 20% of dreams are about things people have actually encountered, most others are unique, unusual scenes. In addition, scientists had started doing dream tests, where they actually brought people into a laboratory and trained them to dream lucidly. Lucid dreaming is dreaming when a dreamer is a bystander in the scene, knows that he/she is actually in a dream, and can wake up and continue the dream if he/she ever wanted to. The scientists would encourage their people to think, “I will be aware when I dream; I will observe,” and teach them the signs of dreaming, like the light switches don’t work, you can’t eat or blink, levitation is possible, and it is often impossible to scream. 

Another interesting topic related to this is sleepwalking. Like dreaming, sleepwalking is an unknown behavior. Unlike dreaming though, it occurs in non-REM, very deep sleep. The cause of sleepwalking in children may have to do with fatigue, lack of sleep, or anxiety. Sleepwalking in adults can have to do with mental disorders, reactions to drugs and alcohol, or medical conditions like seizures. In elders, sleep walking may be a symptom of an organic brain syndrome or REM behavior disorders. During a sleepwalk episode, a person may sit up and look as though they are awake while they are actually asleep. This funny yet sad procedure can involve the person getting up and walking around, or doing complex activities like moving furniture, going to the bathroom, and dressing and undressing. Some can even drive a car when asleep! These episodes can be very brief or 30 minutes or longer. In conclusion, sleepwalking and dreams are two strange things that can happen to people at night, and are unsolved mysteries. Dreaming supposedly acts as a strange kind of sound check for the brain that may bring some comfort to a person, and sleepwalking is an unusual procedure that happens due to disorders, reactions to things, and fatigue.

=NS